Admiration
for Blade Runner 2049 begins with the
design and execution of the movie's world, which uses the backdrop of its 1982
predecessor as a springboard to upgrade that vision, to look at it from
different angles, and to expand the scope of this dystopian future.
Unfortunately, admiration for this semi-spinoff/semi-sequel, for the most part,
also ends with its world. There's a distinct vision here, one that's inspired
but not necessarily limited by Ridley Scott's influential film, but the movie
cannot escape the restrictions established by the characters, events, and, most
importantly, ideas of Blade
Runner.

This
is, of course, to be expected of a sequel, which the movie most definitely
is—except when it isn't. The central ideas are, again, the nature of being,
the intentional confusion of what is "real" and what isn't, and
whether the series' replicants (artificially engineered androids that look and
behavior like humans) are "real" beings or, since they do not fit the
established definition of life, akin to slaves.

Hampton
Fancher and Michael Green's screenplays sets off to explore these ideas in a
more distant future (the year 2049, naturally), in which the line between humans
and replicants has been further muddied, and with new characters, who directly
challenge the original film's themes. All of that is eventually thwarted, as the
story tries to raise the ghosts of the past without finding a satisfying way to
tie the two stories together.

The
replicants of the future are basically the same, although they no longer have
the previous models' lifespan restrictions or, apparently, Philosophy 101
program installed into their brain functions. As established within the first
five minutes of the movie (Something that needs to be pointed out for the
"spoiler"-phobic crowd), our hero is one of these new androids. He's
"K" (Ryan Gosling), a cop, known as a blade runner, assigned to track
down and "retire" any remnants of the older replicant models—ones
that were made without the four-year death sentence installed into their
programming. "K" doesn't have any moral quandaries to killing his own
kind, since he seems to have been programmed without scruples (except for
questioning whether killing a human would be the same thing, since humans are
born and anything born would, in his thinking, have a soul) or a personality.

There's
a plot, involving a skeleton found buried beneath a tree on a synthetic farm
owned by one of the older replicants, but for a while, none of it really
matters. The movie would rather explore this place and these ideas.

The
place looks a bit like the Los Angeles of the original film's 2019 world,
although our first encounter with the world takes place flying above the
artificial farmland outside of the city, where tall, off-white spires rise from
the desert with circular patterns surrounding them. A good portion of the movie
takes place in these remote places, such as a vast garbage dump that used to be
San Diego and the nuclear-ravaged remnants of Las Vegas, where statues of
scantily clad women rise out of the orange haze, like monuments to a
long-forgotten religion.

Indeed,
our first glimpse of the city takes place far overhead, and from that angle, it
looks just as flat as the countryside. That is until director Denis Villeneuve's
camera slightly pans to one side, at which point we can peek into the valleys of
city streets. Villeneuve has transformed this world into a puzzle of sorts, in
which every new sight must, not only be seen, but also be interpreted to
understand its nature. These aren't simply spectacular images of a ruined world
(brought to that state by a mysterious electronic blackout that also helps to
explain why "K" has to do all of his investigatory legwork).
Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and the design and effects teams have
created a world that functions—in ways that we may only comprehend on a vague
level but that, somehow, we still understand.

The
movie is frontloaded with sights and ideas, with the twist on our sympathies by
having a replicant protagonist (This makes sense, since the first film was more
intrigued by its artificial lifeforms than any real ones), a holographic partner
(played by Ana de Armas) that is the only "person" to whom
"K" has an attachment, and a look at the process of and philosophy
behind the creation of replicants. The last one comes from Niander Wallace
(Jared Leto), who has taken control of the company that built the androids.
There's a haunting scene in which we see the entire life cycle of one replicant—from
birth, out of a gooey canal, to violent death—in a matter of minutes. It also
comes with a brief appearance by Carla Juri, playing an independent
subcontractor (an amusing detail) who creates false memories for the replicants'
comfort.

These
concepts seem to be setting up something more significant. Ultimately, they
merely tease an abundance of possibilities, which the movie ceases to explore
once the nature of the plot's central mystery becomes the focus. Needless to
say, "K" finds a reason to team up with Deckard (Harrison Ford),
because the latter's past ties into the former's investigation. That's about all
that is worth saying on the matter, since the final act of Blade
Runner 2049 sacrifices its earlier ideas for action, hollow nostalgia, and
uncharacteristic sentimentality.